Wanting to Hit the Save Button for Them But Can’t

Recently, I started blogging poems especially featuring Boomer, the Chocolate Lab

and our life together with Chris, Boomer’s mistress who seconds as my wife

in Boomer’s eyes.

It’s a new venture, a birthing, a baptism of sorts, that which might lead

to confirmation and then, hopefully, a long life time faith commitment.

It’s exciting and scary like marriage, which we enter with unbelievable anticipation and apprehension.

Yesterday was Friday and two recent college graduates got off work early,

hopped into an SUV driven by a buddy who just got into town, picked up their tux’s,

hit the wet patch, flew into a ditch and shot out again directly into the side of a house.

The brother of the bride and the groom-to-be died instantly.  The best buddy driver will

recover…physically.

Birth, baptism, confirmation, anticipation, apprehension.

I am apprehensive that the poems will die; three young adults filled with anticipation hadn’t  lived long enough to have apprehension.

They missed the rehearsal on Friday; they missed the rehearsal dinner. It’s Saturday and the now former bride-to-be has missed the wedding.

The pastor sits in his study writing a funeral meditation instead of delivering a wedding meditation. He thinks of the name of a good therapist.

The reception has been cancelled; the funeral is being planned.

A mother puts away a bridal gown.

These words were penned on a napkin in a restaurant on Saturday afternoon.

On the way home an oncoming car crossed the centerline at the curve I have always feared. My car swerved to the right, the tires blew up gravel; I guided the car back onto the road. I drive mostly with anticipation and apprehension.

The picture of the crushed SUV shot through my mind’s eye.

I sit giving birth to this by transferring the words to a Word document.  In apprehension, I confirm the birth by hitting the save button before its life might be taken away.

I can only hit the save button for words; I can’t hit the save button for them.